Arne Slot has repeatedly returned to one of Liverpool’s most dramatic nights of the past year, and for good reason. When he reflected in March 2025 on the Champions League tie against Paris Saint-Germain, he struggled to hide how much the game had moved him.
“I hope every fan around the world was hoping this game wouldn’t stop because it was incredible,” he said after Liverpool lost on penalties to the side that would go on to win the competition. “It was the best game of football that I was ever involved in.”
That match now feels like a possible hinge point in Liverpool’s recent decline. If Slot’s reign does end this summer, as some around Anfield are increasingly expecting, it may be remembered as the night that started to shift the mood. A few days after the PSG defeat, Liverpool lost the final of the “Fizzy Cup” to a far more inspired Newcastle side. Since then, the team has never quite looked the same, even after claiming a 20th league title in April.
A season that changed shape
The contrast between that Champions League classic and what followed is central to the latest edition of Football Daily. Slot’s admiration for the PSG tie has remained striking, but Liverpool’s broader form has not matched the emotional high of that evening. The article suggests that the sense of loss from the European exit and the cup final defeat may have lingered throughout the campaign.
What makes the situation so intriguing is the way Slot keeps returning to the PSG match, even as the discussion around his future intensifies. In football terms, it was one of those rare games that felt bigger than the result itself. In hindsight, it may also have been the point at which Liverpool’s season began to veer in a different direction.
Reader letters and side notes
The newsletter also includes a selection of reader comments, covering everything from retirement announcements to Arsenal’s long-running tendency to miss chances at key moments.
One letter, from Noble Francis, pointed to the oddity of football retirement news. “With Aaron Ramsey having been without a club since the end of last year and now retiring, it looks like we’ve moved from players announcing their retirement who we weren’t even aware were still playing to players announcing their retirement who were already retired but weren’t aware of it themselves,” the letter said.
Another reader, Krishna Moorthy, took aim at Arsenal’s recurring frustration in title races: “Dear Arsenal, how do you sustain this insane consistency in blowing your chances? Every. Single. Time. Players come and go. Managers stay and leave. The only constant is the fans’ anguish. What wizardry will you wield now to hand over the title to Manchester City?”
There was also a brief exchange about language and humour in football writing. Rowan Sweeney responded to a note about Australian slang and modern euphemisms, while Greg Wyatt added a playful defence of the word “flamin’” and the persistence of football banter.
What it all adds up to
On the surface, the issue is a familiar one: a manager looking back fondly on a remarkable match while his team’s momentum appears to have faded. But the piece frames that contrast as something more telling. For Liverpool, the PSG night represented the height of one kind of football experience. The weeks that followed brought a cup final defeat, growing concern, and now a more uncertain outlook.
Football Daily uses that storyline as a way of capturing the strange emotional arc of a season. A brilliant match can leave a lasting mark, but so can what happens immediately after it. In Liverpool’s case, the memory of that European epic now sits beside questions about where the team goes next and whether Slot will still be in charge when summer arrives.
For now, the PSG tie remains a vivid reminder of what Liverpool were capable of. The problem is that everything since has made it look less like a peak and more like the start of something harder to recover from.
